The Clipless Kickstarter project and its implications for Tasker NFC use
The Clipless is an interesting project that’s on Kickstarter to get funding right now, and have actually already reached the funding goal. It’s a mounting system that consists of a piece you attach to your phone, tablet, or case, and some compatible pieces you can attach to either surfaces or even clothing. The idea is to have a device you can slide onto holders all over the place, removing the need for bulky holders, while still not requiring a special case which many similar products do.
Now, the interesting thing here is that someone tipped off the project creators about NFC, and they’re putting that in the surface mounts. What that basically means is that the small pieces designed to let the Clipless attach to surfaces will have a NFC chip in them, allowing you to program them to trigger various things on your phone. In true “I have never heard of Tasker”-fashion, the team has partnered up with some random NFC task trigger app that’s essentially a very, very (very, very, very) stripped down, NFC-only version of Tasker, but since NFC-tags aren’t app-specific, there’s no reason you can’t just ignore this “partnered” app and just use the Clipless with Tasker and an NFC plug-in.
What that means in practice is that if you have an NFC enabled phone, the Clipless will provide you with a mounting system where you can program each surface mount to launch a Tasker task. This can be something simple like opening a cooking app when you slide your phone into its kitchen mount, or a more complicated task that enables needed equipment for watching movies and starts voice recognition to ask you what you want to watch when you mount it near your home theater. A very obvious use would be to put it in your car and have it start a car mode, which in Tasker can mean a fully custom scene with everything you need.
The NFC part is of course not new here, as NFC stickers are available for next to nothing, but I like the idea of combining it with a mount system that you can use in several locations. My phone doesn’t have NFC, which is one of very few things I miss on the aging thing, and seeing this has rekindled my envy of those that do have an NFC-enabled device. At $35 for two connectors and 6 NFC-enabled mounts, it’s cheap enough so that I wouldn’t worry about slapping those mounts everywhere.
Since this is a Kickstarter project though, you will have to wait a while to get your hands on these, as they’re expected to ship in October. Because of that, I think I should mention that you can easily make something like this yourself, by using quick release plates for tripods and cameras combined with NFC stickers. It will be a bit clumpier, but it’s essentially the exact same concept, except for the clothing version of the mount.
